On the Peloponnesian war

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On the Peloponnesian War

That the Peloponnesian war was an important historical event there can be no doubt. George Marshall (1880-1959) says on the subject:
“I doubt seriously whether a man can think with full wisdom and with deep convictions regarding certain of the basic issues today who has not at least reviewed in his mind the period of the Peloponnesian War and the fall of Athens.”
The purpose of this essay is essay is therefore to examine the Peloponnesian war and to find out why it is such an important historical event. Let us then proceed to take a look at the sources on the war that have survived from antiquity to our days.

The principal source on the subject is “The History of the Peloponnesian war” by Thucydides. Thucydides himself was a contemporary historian and participated in the war as a military commander. His history covers most of the war, but was left unfinished. The last few years of the war are thus not covered by Thucydides.
This brings us to our second source, the Hellenica by Xenophon. Xenophon, an Athenian by birth, much like Thucydides, was kind enough to supply us with an account of the last few years of the war. Indeed, it seems like that was what Xenophon himself had in mind (that is, to continue Thucydides history) as the first sentence strongly suggests:” After this, not many days later, Thymochares came from Athens with a few ships…”
Plutarch, although not a contemporary like Thucydides and Xenophon, has also covered some of this subject in his Lives of noble Greeks and Romans. Since Plutarch himself said in his Lives that “My intention is not to write history, but lives”, he is not the most reliable source.
This brings us to our next source, Diodorus of Sicily, who was a Greek historian, born in Sicily. In book XII and XIII of his Historical Library he covers the war, which gives us an alternative the writings of Thucydides and Xenophon.
Aristotle supplies us with some information on the times in general in the Constitution of Athens. He does not cover the war specifically, but the information on the history of Athens can be useful sometimes.
Having thus covered the sources, let us proceed to what caused the war.

Thucydides tells us that after the Greco-Persian(covered by Herodotus in his famous Histories) wars Athens had developed into a major power in the Mediterranean. The Spartans, who were rather war-like in nature, feared that eventually Athens may come to dominate too much of Greece. This is demonstrated by the fact that during a helot revolt in one of the Spartans cities, Ithome, the Spartans called upon all of their allies but dismissed the Athenians, who at the time were one of their allies. Apparently this offended the Athenians and made the latter break the alliance between the two city-states. We can compare the situation between the two city-states with that of the Central and Allied Powers in the First World War. The tension was there; it would not take much to trigger a war. A later conflict between the cities of Corinth and Corcyra would directly cause the war, for Athens allied with Corcyra. Corinth, perhaps aware of the tension between Sparta and Athens, demanded from Sparta to join their cause against Corcyra and Athens. And thus, according to Thucydides began the Peloponnesian war.
Diodorus account of the same event does not seem as reliable. For whereas Thucydides spent a lot of time explaining the various factors what caused the war, Diodorus blames it all on Pericles (Pericles was the treasurer of Athens at the time). According to Diodorus, the war was the only way for Pericles to escape the wrath of the Athenian people, because he had been spending the gold of Athens “upon his private occasions”. By going to war the people would get distracted. This account seems much less reliable than that of Thucydides, for it seems unlikely that one man could have such tremendous influence in the democracy of Athens, even one “of a very noble family” as Diodorus puts it. It seems more likely that all participants at least played some part in causing the war.

Let us proceed to the war itself. The actual war seems to have started in the city of Platea, in Boetia. Platea was an independent city who allied to Athens, whereas the land known as Boetia was an ally of Sparta. A few men of Platea desired to hand over the city to Boetia, and asked Thebes to send a small force to the city to capture it. This did not go as planned and the Thebans were routed; a few were captured, but after negotiations these were returned to their land. Both the Spartans and the Athenians prepared for war shortly after this. The Spartan and their allies had most of their forces on land, whereas the Athenians had much more focus on a strong navy. This may have been one of reasons the war lasted for such a long time; the two cities could simply not meet one another face to face in a decisive battle. For how can a navy destroy a land force, and vice versa?

The Spartans, having gathered their forces, marched to Attica, the land of the Athenians, where they “began their ravages” as Thucydides says. The Athenians responded by sending their navy along the coast down to Spartan lands where they caused much damage. The Spartans were thus forced to retreat to defend their own lands, says Diodorus, but Thucydides says they “continued their ravages for a long time”, and that they only retreated once they ran out of supplies. Diodorus calls this manoeuvre “ingenious” and as one can expect gives the credit to Pericles. Once again, Thucydides seems more reliable.

It was after this that the city of Athens was struck by plague and lost many men, including Pericles. At this time things did not bode well for the Athenians and their allies. But a certain Demosthenes was chosen as the new general of the Athenian army; he proved to be a general of some ability, managing to surround a Spartan force consisting of some 300 men. But capturing these men was beyond this mans ability. Instead, Cleon, a politician, took command of the Athenian army and managed to capture the Spartans. Sparta and her allies took this loss very hard, and it seemed as if the tide had turned to Athens favour. Yet again the tide turned, and after a successful mission by Brasidas, the Spartan general, who captured the city of Amphipolis. Thucydides, who himself tried to save the city, tells us that it was a very important city finanically to Athens. In the battle over the city both Brasidas of Sparta and Cleon of Athens are killed. The death of these two men resulted in what is known as the peace of Nicias. Athens may have thought it possible to get the city back without bloodshed through a peace and needed a new leader, and Sparta had lost one of their finest soldiers in Brasidas.

Thucydides gives us the terms of the peace. For example, the terms dictated that Athens were to give Sparta back the cities they captured, and vice versa. Thus both cities were restored to a similar state which they had previous to the war. This is interesting, for if we look at what caused the war according to Thucydides, we find that the Spartans thought that Athens was growing too powerful. By giving the Athenians back their cities, how could they expect such a peace last for 50 years, as the terms suggested? 50 years would give Athens plenty of time to further extend her power. As we can expect with the above reasoning, both Diodorus and Thucydides tells us that the peace was not a very stable one. After the peace had been firmly established, the city of Argos desired to ally with the other Greek cities. They apparently deisred to form a coaliton of sorts against Athens and Sparta, whom they thought to be enemies of Greece. Ultimately however, they did ally with Athens and marched upon the lands of the Spartans, once again initiating the war. It seems resonable to believe that the Athenians hoped to crush the threat from Sparta once and for all, and now that they had many strong allies they could muster a large force on land and thus engage their enemies in a decisive battle. And the two sides met on the field of Manetia, where the Athenians and her allies were defeated. Once again, the two cities were enemies.
Syracuse, the largest city of Siciliy, had a Dorian population, much like Sparta. The city of Athens, on the other hand, were Ionians. When the city of Syracuse attakced a city on Sicily that was of Ionian origin, it called for aid from Athens. It is an interesting thing to see that ethnic origin made a differene back then as well; it can be compared to what was going to be known as rascim of later times. Alcibiades of Athens was chosen to lead the expedition, but just before he was to embark he was accused of religious crimes and sentenced to death by the Athenians. Fearing for his life he deserted to the Spartans, to which he could supply much information about the Athenians plans. The Spartans immedtiately sent reinforcements to Syracuse and utterly crushed the Athenian effort, destroing not onlt their army but also their highly regarded navy. This must have been a very hard blow to the Athenian cause and to the morale of their people, because they got to witness the destruciton of their primary strength: their navy.

It was now, as Diodorus says, that the Athenians recalled Alcibiades. This was to prove a wise decision, as soon as Alcibiades was back in Athens things started to improve considerably. For instance, while he was gone Athens turned into a oblirgachy. It is also here we must bid our farewell to Thuycidides, and welcome Xenophon into our narrative. When Alcibiades returned he worked on, and was succesful in his task to restore democracy. Xenophon tells us that the city of Athens, under the leadership of Alcibiades florished again and scored many victories agains their enemies. But this was not meant to last; for factions arose in Athens and Alcibiades was not re-elected as general. When this happened, the fate of the city was sealed. Athens lost a descive naval battle, and Lysnader, admiral of Sparta, seized the opportunity by taking the Hellespont. This was the main source of Athens grain, and this was to mark the end of the war. Fearing starvation the Athenians gave up.

Let us then take a look at the effects the war had on Greece and history. We must remember that Sparta and Athens employed very different political systems. Since Sparta ultimately won, in the eyes of contemptoraries it may have proved that monarchy was superior to democracy. This may have influced philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle; the former who lived during the war and would later critisize the Athenian democracy, favoruing the Spartan monarchy.

It may be said that what united the Greek city-states was the fact that they had no common master. Having no common master, they were forced unite when they faced, for instance, the large Persian empire, which strechted from Egypt to India. But the Peloponnesian war also demonstrated the downsides of this; when you have so many city-states, all more or less independent, in one nation with different desires, it is difficult to avoid war in the long run. The relationship between Sparta and Athens before the war can also be compared to that of Carthage and Rome before the Punic Wars. The Punic Wars began with two masters of the Meditareanen; it ended with one. The Punic wars were perhaps a strive towards unity, towards one master. But the Peloponnesian wars failed to accomplish this. Instead, it left the Spartans with the majority of the power, but the wars did not end, for most city-states were still independent and continued to wage war upon one another. That the people of Greece cried for unity is demonstrated by the fact that of all city-states, only Athens and Thebes rose up against Philip of Macedon when he invaded the nation some 70 years after the war.

Thucydides points out to us that it was an exceptionally long war, unlike the Greco-Persian wars which lasted for but a couple of years at most. This must have weakened Greece as a whole with the constant warfare, and with the expansion of Carthage and later Rome, Greece was no longer the power it once had been. Greece was later conquered and became a part of the Roman Empire. With Philips invasion Greece was not given enough time to recover; I therefore believe that the...